Winterizing on the road compressor

[tbirdman]

Going home you may need to winterize your RV before you get home. This Husky tire inflator is perfect for the job of blowing out the water lines. It's key feature is the ability to set the PSI. Also runs off of AC or 12V. It needs some mods to make it useful. I cut off the tire valve clamp and added a piece of 10' plastic tubing. You can find the mating unions/clamps in the compressor section of HD. I then added a quick hose disconnect to one end of the plastic hose and a quick disconnect to the city water winterizing adapter. Doesn't take much room in the RV.

[thefitrv]

I winterize with compressed air, but I don't know if I would trust the job to a small inflator. While the adjustable pressure on this one is nice, you also need enough flow to blow out the lines properly. I couldn't find any CFM listed for it.

Though the pressure might be adequate, I think it would be difficult to clear out the lines with it. You wouldn't, for example, try to winterize your home's in-ground sprinkler system with this compressor. There's just not enough flow to get the job done. The RV plumbing system presents the same issue, just on a smaller scale.

Of course, I haven't tried this. At home, we use a permanently mounted, 60 gallon compressor to winterize, along with an inline filter. It moves 13cfm at 40 psi. That may be overkill - but then I've never had a winterization issue either.

My $0.02.

[avanti]

I have successfully winterized using a tiny compressor for more than a decade. It does take longer--you can't just whip through all the outlets, you need to repeatedly allow the volume to build up in the system and then let it out suddenly. Perfectly practical, though. The only trick is to avoid over-pressurizing between bursts. Pressure-limiting units like the one that tribesman references help a lot in this regard.

It is true that you wouldn't want to use this technique with your sprinkler system, but only because it would take forever to fill the much-larger volume of pipe to an adequate pressure. Scale matters.
EDIT: Also, this technique depends on being able to close the faucet valves at the ENDS of the system, which you can't do with a sprinkler system.

[tbirdman]

I have a big upright compressor at home but its too big to carry with me. I'm glad avanti verified that the smaller compressor would work. The key to this compressor is the ability to set the PSI. At home I would use the large compressor, but now I need something for the road.

Interesting regarding the sprinkler winterizing. I live in oregon so it doesn't get that cold. I just turn the water off and activate each zone. I've never had a problem. Now I forgot to drain and turn off the outside faucet before I left on a trip before a freeze last year. This summer I had a $500 water bill. Thank goodness I discovered the break before i ran up too much of a bill. I did get a leak credit though for some of it.

Credit the builder. He put a faucet in the garage which is handy in the winter and another one off the front deck in a closet. These I don't need to winterize.

[coveman]

I use a good old bicycle pump and a blow out valve attached to the city water inlet.
I blow out the lines one at a time and usually takes about 10 minutes and in testing it, the pressure was 25 psi so no danger of damaging the pipes, and stores easily.

[ptourin]

Has anybody looked at the M-B compressors that are under the passenger floor in some of the Sprinter 3500's? I assumed that mine wouldn't handle blowing the lines out, so I've never looked carefully, but maybe I should - a bit of extra time blowing out the lines is better than driving around begging for air at gas stations and tire places <g>...

[tbirdman]

I have an OEM air compressor for my rear air shocks. It would had been nice if they could had plumbed it for the water lines.